Blockchain Development: A Step-by-Step Guide
In this technological world, everyone tends to adopt a simple lifestyle where they can maintain a smooth functioning work-life balance. A continuous hectic routine leads to stress on workers’ minds.
For example, you earn money after making an effort. When a time for saving comes, you have to integrate a third party, such as a bank. You pay them higher fees to save money and keep track of your activities.
Isn’t that frustrating? To get rid of this terrible situation, thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto who develops blockchain technology where you don’t have to worry about secure transactions and records.
Let’s explore the real magic of blockchain development, like what it is, its types, its benefits, and how you can develop it.
What is Blockchain?
It is a distributed ledger technology controlled by cryptographic symbols. You can secure your digital assets in this network system.
It is a chain of blocks where unique information is stored on each block. Its immutable nature makes changes to records impossible.
It provides real-time access to all members. With its completely transparent nature and well-documented reliable features, blockchain technology is the right hand for performing various tasks. No one has the stamina to hack this system or edit it.
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Types of blockchain
Four main types of Blockchain technology exist. The function of each category is slightly different from each other.
- Private: Take the example of Hyperledger to consider a private ledger blockchain mechanism. It is a centralized network by giving authority to a single entity. If you wish to be a part of this ledger, you must obtain permission to become a part.
- Public: As the name suggests, a public blockchain is a network of calculated consensus mechanisms, including proof of stake and proof of work. Everyone is open to make transactions with proper validation that leads to earning rewards from the merchants. Ethereum and Bitcoin are examples of that.
- Side chains: Working with the main network of chains, sidechains are the prominent type of blockchain. The escalation of scalability and improved efficiency happens through it. It helps in the transfer of digital assets between two different decentralized technologies.
- Consortium/Hybrid: If you want to get some functions for private chains and public chains in one solution, a hybrid blockchain is an example that contains both functionalities. R3 and Dragonchain work that have a base of consortium.
Exciting benefits of Blockchain
It is an obvious fact that blockchain comes into existence to facilitate the users instead of creating difficulties. Some of the main benefits of blockchain technology are presented below to give you an idea of its importance in this innovative world.
- Decentralization: For the construction and easy accessibility of a particular platform, the decentralization feature of blockchain implies a consensus system for making decisions. It eradicates the role of centralization as banks and helps the users to be independent with decentralization.
- Transparency: Unlike traditional systems, blockchain technology prefers transparency. It stores all records of transactions in various locations. Users can access this permission to the blockchain where they can see all the information clearly without any hindrance.
- Safety: Preserving the privacy of users’ data is the priority for blockchain networks. With end-to-end encryption and legal authorization activities, it keeps data on the network to computers that cannot be hacked or altered.
- Increased speed: Traditionally, most functions are performed by humans. As a result, there are greater chances of errors. Blockchain eliminates this problem. It does everything efficiently without the integration of paperwork and stores information on the blockchain.
- Automation: Automation is the hallmark of blockchain technology. It has included smart contracts that automate every process. For example, if a company sets its conditions for executing a transaction, the transaction is automatically completed after meeting those conditions.
Industries that benefit from Blockchain
It is an admitted reality that blockchain is the right hand in generating 6-figure income streams. But how is that possible? Check out the prominent industries that use the blockchain to perform various functions that help them increase their functions, eliminate money-wasting activities and increase their revenue.
- Medical: Keeping track of patient history and transactions is the main goal achieved with the blockchain solution.
- Insurance: To automate manual work, such as settlement claims and underwriting, blockchain technology increases the speed of each function.
- Food chain: To get rid of rotten smells and ensure food safety, blockchain helps identify any contamination in food products immediately.
- The authorities: Distribution of data related to specific projects among the public and agencies is done through blockchain technology used by a government.
- Finance: Releasing paperwork and increasing the efficiency of financial operations is the leading functionality achieved with the integration of blockchain.
Building a blockchain network
Undoubtedly, the presence of blockchain in any industry provides an opportunity to its owners to achieve beneficial results. For this purpose you need to develop a blockchain. Choosing a blockchain development company is the best decision in this regard.
Furthermore, we have explained the primary step in the development of blockchain below. Look at them.
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1. Identify use cases
Before developing a blockchain solution, you need to identify what problem you want to solve. To achieve this goal, take a deep analysis of the use cases of blockchain in your niche. Check if migrating on a blockchain network can solve this problem. If that is not feasible, go for blockchain development from scratch.
2. Choose a consensus mechanism
The choice of a consensus mechanism for blockchain technology plays a crucial role. Some names of the main consensus mechanism are presented below.
Proof of work:
- Proof of effort.
- Byzantine fault tolerant.
- Deposit-based consensus.
- Federated Byzantine agreement.
- Proof of elapsed time.
- Derived PBFT.
- Redundant Byzantine fault tolerance.
- Simplified Byzantine fault tolerance.
- Federated Consensus.
- Round Robin.
- Delegated Proof of Stake.
According to your field, you need to pick up one of the consensus mechanisms that suits you better.
3. Choosing a Blockchain platform
After choosing a consensus mechanism, the next step is to make a decision regarding the blockchain platform. It will depend on your requirements like the type of blockchain platform you have to choose. Some names of the popular blockchain platform are given below. Check them out below.
- BigChainDB.
- Chain core.
- Hyperledger Sawtooth Lake.
- Multiple chain.
- Corda.
- Credits.
- Domus Tower Blockchain.
- Elements Blockchain Platform.
- Eris: DB.
- Open chain.
- Quorum.
- Ethereum.
- Hydra chain.
- Hyperledger fabric.
- Hyperledger Iroha.
- Stellar.
- Symbiont assembly.
4. Development of nodes
In this step, you need to be careful about designing nodes for your blockchain development. First, you need to decide whether your distributed ledger technology will be public, private, hybrid, or consortium.
Choose the running platform for cloud or on-premises nodes.
Next, enter your hardware configuration, including disk size, memory, and processors.
Next, decide on operating systems, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, CentOS, Debian, or Windows.
Take an overview of these parameters and make a choice.
- Permissions.
- Embedded assets.
- Handshake.
- Atomic exchanges.
- Key management.
- Address formats.
- Key formats.
- Block signatures.
- Multi-signatures.
- Parameters.
- Asset Issuance.
- Reissuance of assets.
5. Creation of APIs
Completing the design of nodes is a sign of moving forward with the creation of the API. For that, you need to analyze your chosen blockchain platform. If it contains pre-made APIs, you can skip this step without risk.
If it doesn’t, you need to develop it. For API development, focus on the prominent categories explained below.
- Basically, you need to create key pairs with addresses.
- Then prepare smart contracts.
- Enable data authentication, storage and retrieval with correct hashes and digital signatures.
6. UI/Admin Designing
At this stage, the design of the front end begins where you ponder over three main points.
- External databases (MySQL, MongoDB).
- Servers (web servers, FTP servers, email servers).
- Programming languages (HTML5, C#, Golang, Solidity, Java, Javascript, Ruby, Angular JS Nodejs, CSS, PHP, Python).
7. Deployment
Once you’ve completed each step, including front-end and back-end development, you need to deploy it.
After testing all features, you can deploy it either in the cloud or on-premises, as per your choice. Be sure to keep an eye on the developed application of blockchain. It will help you keep the app updated.
For example, you need to integrate advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, biometrics, bots, cloud, cognitive services, containers, data analytics, the Internet of Things, and machine learning.
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Final thoughts
Blockchain is constantly accelerating its real-time benefits in all areas of life. Since 1991, it has exerted its impact on various businesses. Whether you are part of the medical industry or finance, blockchain is here to solve big to small problems.
Undoubtedly, blockchain is a complex topic and not everyone has the potential to learn and understand it very well. However, in this guide, we have elaborated on this dynamic topic in a simple way. We hope you have understood each concept very effectively. Then you can implement blockchain technology in your application.
Are you interested in developing a blockchain for your company? Get in touch with a blockchain development company that will help you in this regard.
This article is written by Afira. Afira is a Technical Content Writer at Hashlogics. She has expertise in writing blog posts, and lending pages, especially on technical topics. With 3 years of experience working with international clients, she has the art of producing engaging content that is easy to understand for users and drives more traffic. Follow her: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook.
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